Australia cont'd

I've had some issues with Internet connectivity lately so here goes the very delayed last entry to my traveling blog. Since I left Australia I was back in London for two weeks, doing some work for a quick bank account boost, and I'm currently in the States visiting friends and family for a few weeks.

Here it goes:

So after leaving Sydney I headed up to Byron Bay with the Wills. We got off the bus after what ended up being a pretty sleepless night for me and arrived to several backpacker staff with their vans trying to draw us to their hostels. It worked; Will, Will and I were too tired to do any deciding ourselves, so we followed a blond Canadian named Eric to his van and he took us to Aquarius hostel. 

We checked in to the nicest dorm I've ever stayed in and picked beds on the top floor of our duplex style room where we met Katie, another Canadian who had also just arrived. 

Our first day in Byron was spent watching the rain POUR down like I've never seen before. We realized that this may go on, so we found out about bus trips to a place called Nimbin - a hippie town that hasn't moved on since about 1968. We took a very psychedelic bus tour to the town listening to Pink Floyd, The Doors and other 'free love' bands to arrive in a multi-coloured tie-dye town. Walking down the main street was an exercise in turning down one offer after another for weed, brownies, more weed, cookies...you get the idea. I took a tour of the Nimbin Museum whose design concept was something along the lines of 'here's some stuff I found on the street/at the flea market/in my cellar.' There was stuff EVERYWHERE, and none of it seemed to make any sort of sense. Hippie heaven. At the end, before exiting, we met a 50-something year old woman rushing off yelling "just wait 15 minutes guys, I'll be back with the cookies soon, I just have to pick them up from my house." This wasn't just a nice lady who baked things for visitors. She made her money making tourists feel like they were on a Grateful Dead tour, or a character in Ken Kesey's acid charged life. On the way home our bus driver pointed out all the 'beautiful shades of green' in the countryside and took us through the mud back to our Byron home. Where it was still raining. 

Unfortunately the rain continued so after meeting the backpacker staff and we spent our nights exploring Byron Bay nightlife with them and spending most of our days watching the rain come down with two days of sun that we spent on the beach and walking to the lighthouse - the Easternmost point of mainland Australia. 

After a few days I decided I needed to make a move up north if I wanted to see more of the country. One problem. All that rain? Causes problems. Like flooding. In both directions. 

Nobody, myself included, could get in or (more importantly) OUT of Byron for a few days. 

I embraced my fate and paid at the reception for more nights at Aquarius. At least I could hang out here with people I liked, and I got free dinner every night, even if it was the same stuff over and over again... free is free. Plus we entertained ourselves with pub quiz nights and poker tournaments.

For all the less-than-ideal weather, I had an amazing time in Byron Bay thanks to the Wills, Katie and the Aquarius staff. After deciding that it was time for me to leave I realized that my time was now quite short, so instead of heading up north I headed back to Sydney and the twins. Since the highway was still flooded I took a flight from the small airport inland that was still accessible down to Sydney airport where Joh met me to take me back to another few days of home comforts. Mike and Lisa were still around so I spent my last few days seeing them, taking a day trip to the Blue Mountains, and going to the Sydney Aquarium where I saw a platypus! They'd been hiding when we went to the Sydney Zoo in my first week, so I was glad to check off that last Australian animal from my list after kangaroo, wallaby and koala among others. 

I also cooked a meal for Nad, Sal, Joh and Lisa that went down well, I think? 

I loved Australia, a sentiment perhaps not expressed well enough in this shortened version of my time there, but I have decided to save up as quickly as possible for a return trip on a one year work-holiday visa. 

So that's it! I took a flight from Sydney back to Bangkok where I spent a day doing some last minute shopping and sharing my stories with new travelers experiencing their first nights abroad on Koh San Road. Then it was back to the airport to travel back to London and home. 

Seven and a half months later, a term of teaching and an amazing backpacker experience through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and finally Australia and I'm back where I started. Back in the Foster home in Crouch End, London. Dreaming of my next adventure. 

I've had a great time writing this blog and plan on setting up a more permanent URL to continue life as a blogger, so watch this space for a final update and a name URL address. 

Thanks for reading, commenting, and sending me all those great letters and packages. I write for you. :)

"The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page." - St Augustine. 

Take The Weather With You

The weather changes pretty often in a lot of the world. It's usually pretty unpredictable no matter what Al Roker or any other crazed weatherman/woman tells you. 

Have you ever travelled to visit friends or family on a day where their weather happens to change from warm to cold or vice versa? If yes, then have you found people saying things like "oh, you brought the sun with you," or "ohh, why did you bring the rain with you from England?" I am an innocent traveller. I do not 'bring' weather with me, it changes when it wants to change and pays no regard to my travel plans. If it did, I would never 'bring the rain from England' as I often seem to do. Despite how aware I am of how weird this phrase is, I've found myself thinking it, and I may even have said it at one point, not sure, to our new visitor Matthew, Kelly's boyfriend. 

Matthew lives in San Diego, where Kelly also resided until she decided to jump ship and come to Asia like the rest of us in the CIEE programme. Anyone in a relationship can understand how hard it is to be away from your partner for long stretches of time and the experience has been just as difficult for Kelly and Matthew as can be expected. Apparently one week ago Matthew finally decided that it was just too long since he'd seen his sweetheart. Last Monday night (or Monday morning for Matthew) he managed to get Kelly to give him all the information he could possibly need to get from Bangkok to Tha Wang Pha including the name of the bus station, the name of our town, everything, using some fake story about a bar tender who told him that trains were better than buses in Thailand (which is FALSE...refer to this post from a couple of moths ago for more details). 

So on Tuesday morning San Diego time, Matthew hopped in his car, drove to LAX, took a plane to Tokyo (several hours in layover), then another plane to Bangkok (several hours hanging out in the airport), got a taxi to the bus station (a couple of hours of waiting...), bus from Bangkok to Nan, BARELY caught the last local bus from Nan to Tha Wang Pha, then hitched a ride with two students who found him on the side of the road, and showed up at our front door completely unannounced on Thursday night, about 38 hours after he had left. Wow. Talk about a big gesture.

Meanwhile, I was happily cooking away in the kitchen (which is in Kelly's room) when these two students pulled up. I couldn't see them in the dark, only their headlights, and all I heard was "hello," and then "Marianne, I don't know..." So I went outside only to see Matthew walking towards my front door having assumed that the room I was in was actually mine, not Kelly's. I recognized him because....well I'm a Facebook stalker (there I said it), and in breathless hysterics tried to explain to Kelly who was outside. I don't think she understood what I was saying until Matthew had been in the room for a good 30 seconds. 

So here he is. White person #5 to temporarily reside at Thawangphapittayakhom school. Unfortunately he's only here until this Friday when he will return to sunny San Diego to take care of some things before going to Australia and then back to Thailand in March which is when he was supposed to show up in the first place. Speaking of sunny - back to how I started this post. I know I just recently wrote about how incredibly cold it has been around here, especially at night. Well since the night Matthew showed up with his bags on the back of a student's motorbike it has been surprisingly mild. I wouldn't call it warm, but I no longer have to sleep with every item of clothing I own. I still have two duvet covers, but Matthew has, as they say, 'brought the warmth' with him. So thanks Matthew, for bringing a little sunshine to Tha Wang Pha and for giving this village some new gossip to chatter about. 

In other news, my friend Kim just wrote a blog about life in Thailand that I think does a great job of describing all the little everyday things. The only thing that differs between her life here and mine is that I do not have a 7-11 on every corner. We do have one, it's a pretty cool hangout. But in general, she's right about the abundance of this 24/7 convenience store. Also, my school does not have buffalo, we have pigs. Kim's blog. 

That's it for now. We tutored all this past weekend which was just as fun as it sounds. This coming weekend we are more than likely going to be running an English camp for the students, so I'll let you know how that goes. 

Finally - I want your comments. Tell me a story (any big gestures committed/witnessed lately?), say hi, talk about what life is like where you are, I don't care, I just care that you share it with me and the rest of the blog-o-sphere. 

Bye for now

Putting clothes ON to go to bed

This week back has been pretty hard so far. I've been reminded of all the things I find so frustrating about the Thai education system - mainly that the kids have no discipline whatsoever and are impossible to control. Then there was a small dramatic episode with our visas and work permits. On Monday we went to extend our visas only to find out that they would expire on exactly the last day of school. That means that we would have to do a border run to Laos either the weekend before, or on the very last day of school which is time consuming and not free. We finally got that sorted out, and I can now stay in the country until March 31st with no obligation to leave which is a huge relief.

In case this all wasn't annoying enough, it is FREEZING here. When most people think of Thailand, they think about tropical weather, beautiful beaches, etc. Read my last two posts to see evidence that this does in fact exist. However, up here in the North, when the sun goes down it takes the heat with it. Yesterday I wore a huge pair of wooly socks, long pajama pants, a long sleeved T-shirt, a sweatshirt with the hood pulled over my head and a SCARF to bed. And I was still freezing underneath my two thick comforters. Our rooms have tiles floors and cement walls with no insulation and no heating/air conditioning, so if it's cold, we're cold, if it's hot, we're still kind of cold. If you've been thinking of sending that care package with the electric blanket, now would be a good time. 

Let's hope it only lasts a couple more weeks, then bring on the Thai summer!